Touch screen works great. Quad-core power in an all-in-one desktop. Wireless keyboard and mouse. Both 64GB SSD and 1TB SATA hard drive.

Cons

No Blu-ray option. System is sealed (no upgrades). Only 60-day Norton Internet Security trial. TV Tuner uses adapter. The 64GB C: drive's a little small for a lot of apps. Bloatware.

Bottom Line

The Gateway One ZX6810-01 all in one desktop PC shows that the touchscreen interface is maturing nicely with Windows 7.

The last version of the Gateway One was a marvel of engineering and technical prowess, but it had a few design drawbacks, like a bizarre power brick with built in Ethernet port and that flimsy clip-on Webcam. The new Gateway One ZX6810-01 ($1,399.99 list) both simplifies and refines the design series to the point that it now gives the HP TouchSmart series PCs and Apple iMac a run for their money. It comes with Windows 7 Home Premium, has a large 23-inch HD-ready screen, and a TV tuner, but it lacks the Blu-ray drive which would complete the picture. That said, the Gateway One ZX6810-01 shows that the touchscreen interface is maturing nicely hand in hand with the coming of Windows 7.

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Design
The ZX6810-01 looks similar to the design of the HP TouchSmart IQ816, which essentially means that it resembles a glossy black HDTV set that will fit on your kitchen counter, bedroom dresser or on a desk equally well. The system has a cleanly-designed front panel with a minor flaw: There is an international power switch symbol icon on the front panel, but to turn the system on or off you need to push the chrome metal bar with the Gateway logo that's next to that icon. That's kind of counterintuitive.

A button on the right brings up Gateway's TouchSuite, a kind of visual "home base" with games designed to teach first-time users how to use the touch interface on the desktop (kind of like solitaire teaches you how to use the mouse). TouchSuite resembles HP's TouchSmart user interface concept, but with a few neat programs from Microsoft's Surface technology group. For example, the Virtual Earth/Surface Globe app that lets you find your house then sweep around the globe with a few finger swipes. The touch screen is almost as responsive as the Apple iPod Touch or iPhone, a vast improvement over older PCs like the HP TouchSmart or ASUS Eee Top 1602. Windows 7 improves the touch UI, including icons and touch areas (like the red 'X' to close windows), which are oversized to help you navigate with a finger or stylus. The screen has multitouch functionality so you can do things like rotating and scaling pictures easily. If you can use an iPod Touch or iPhone, you can pickup the touch UI quickly.

There's an "Ambient Light" below the screen that lights the space on your desk for the keyboard, a nice feature for people who like to surf in a darkened room.

Features
The ZX6810 comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse, full 1080p 1,920 by 1,080 resolution screen, 8GB of memory, HD-ready ATI graphics, and 1TB hard drive with 64GB SSD boot drive. (Note: our pre-production review unit had a wired keyboard and mouse. The 64GB SSD C: drive makes the system boot up and load apps quickly, but 64GB will fill up in no time if you install a lot of third-party apps. If you load apps like the full version of Adobe CS4 (Premiere), PhotoShop, InDesign, etc.) you'll run out of room on the C: drive before you know it. You can circumvent this problem by installing applications to the 1TB data drive, but most people are used to just hitting "OK" for the default settings when installing programs.

Since we're nit-picking, the copious bloatware also eats up a bunch of the space on the C: drive: stuff like Gateway Game Zone, Microsoft Office 60-day trial, and ads for eBay and Google are the all-too-common culprits. The included Norton Internet Security 60-day trial is too short.

All-in-one PCs tend to discourage internal expansion, and the ZX6810 is the same: The only upgrade area you can get to are the already-filled memory slots. Thankfully, there are six USB 2.0 ports and the eSATA port for future expansion. The included TV tuner uses an annoying adapter cable to connect the included antenna or your own roof-mounted antenna. I am guessing they did this to accommodate other countries where they may not use US-standard F-type cable connectors. In any case, you can use the ZX6810-01 as an HDTV with the Media Center interface in Windows 7.

Performance
The system's performance is pretty darn good, thanks to the Core 2 Quad processor, 8GB of system memory, and ATI Radeon HD graphics. Predictably, the system couldn't run our highest resolution game tests (because the screen can only go up to 1,920-by-1,080 instead of 1,920-by-1,200), but the other tests ran flawlessly. The ZX6810-01 got a very good 7,925 point score on the PCMark Vantage test, outpacing other systems with quad core processors by several thousand points. No doubt due the speedy SSD is pushing its score up.

Other wins were the system's 3DMark Vantage score (11,434), Crysis (39 fps), and World in Conflict (46 fps) at 1,280-by-1,024 resolution. World in Conflict is certainly playable, but you may have to dial the Crysis settings down a little more to get the ZX6810-01 to 45-60 fps playable frame rates.

In fact, the ZX6810 is one of the fastest all-in-one PCs I've tested. It got an excellent 42-second time on our Windows Media Encoder (WME) test. WME and PhotoShop CS4 (1:39) test results show that the ZX6810-01 is faster than our Editors' Choice Apple iMac (Nvidia GeForce 9400M) on the multimedia tests. It's also faster than the Averatec D1200, Dell Studio One 19, HP Pavilion All-in-One MS214 PC, and Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 (3011-4BU). With the 64GB SSD, TV tuner and 1080p HD touch screen, it's also one of the better equipped.

So why doesn't it unseat the Apple iMac (Nvidia GeForce 9400M) or the original Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 as our Editors' Choice? It might have threatened the iMac as our mainstream multimedia All in One EC, had it included two or more of the following: Blu-ray drive, 80-120GB SSD (these aren't available even as an option this time), or dropped the bloatware. If you have a 1080p screen, you might want an internal Blu-ray drive at least as an option. While fast, the 64GB SSD is just too small these days if you load multimedia apps. And bloatware just wastes space on the SSD.

If you're looking for a multimedia workhorse all in one PC, then check out the Gateway ZX6810-01. It's faster than its rivals, has an innovative Windows 7-backed touchscreen, and is HD-capable. Only a smallish 64GB C: drive and ton of bloatware keep the system from earning our highest honors. Definitely short list the ZX6810-01 if you need a powerful all in one PC.

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Joel Santo Domingo is the Lead Analyst for the Desktops team at PC Magazine Labs. He joined PC Magazine in 2000, after 7 years of IT work for companies large and small. His background includes managing mobile, desktop and network infrastructure on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Joel is proof that you can escape the retail grind: he wore a yellow polo shirt early in his tech career. Along the way Joel earned a BA in English Literature and an MBA in Information Technology...
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